April 16, 2014

In Truth, the Success of the Galaxy S5 is Greatly Exaggerated

Our report titled "Samsung's Galaxy S5 is a Dud According to Korean Carriers" struck a nerve with many Android fans understandably. Many Android fans emailed me and pointed to all kinds of Android reports to prove me wrong, even though our report was focused on Korean mobile carrier statistics. But here's the thing, today you have headlines in the press like this one in Canada that's titled "Samsung exec says the Galaxy S5 'is selling faster than the S4.'" The funny thing is however, that's not what Samsung's executive really said. Pro Android sites are simply hearing what they want to hear.

According to Reuters, Yoon Han-kil, senior vice president of Samsung's product strategy team stated in an interview that "(The S5) is selling faster than the S4 so far, though it's difficult to share specific numbers as we're still at early stages. TheS5 sales should be much better than the S4." That's executive psycho-babble for I don't have a f*&%$!g clue what I'm talking about.

In other words, they don't know how the Galaxy S5 is really going to sell in this quarter or the next two quarters. They can't say definitively how it's really going because "it's difficult to share specific numbers as we're still at early stages."

Mr. Yoon Han-kil is out pushing his Company's new toy, so of course he's going to stretch the truth however he can, but even then he has to backtrack should reality come back to bite him if it fails to win in the market.

Does he have motive to twist reality, distort reality like Androiders liked to pin on the late Steve Jobs. Yes of course. In a recent article the pro-Samsung website the Korea Times made a rather startling statement: In order "to appeal to the new jury and judge, Samsung needs to provide evidence. That's why the company is heavily pushing the S5."

In the end, the Androiders who pulled their hair out of their heads telling me that the un-biased press is reporting that the Galaxy S5 is outselling the S4 get it wrong again. If Samsung's Head Honcho of product strategy can't really make a clean statement about the real status of the S5, how is the "unbiased" pro Android press making such outlandish false statements? I'll give you one guess.

I'll also remind Androiders, should their memory fail them again, that Samsung loves to play marketing tricks by quoting "shipments" as meaning "sales." As a recent report detailing Samsung's deceptive practice puts it, "Diluting the truth is easy when you only works from sales estimates." Imagine that, Samsung twisting the truth and playing more dirty tricks, how shocking. Is the Galaxy S5 really selling all that well? Only time will tell because Samsung's own VP can't honestly answer that question at the moment with a straight face.

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